Few professions require as much grit, or as much perseverance as the teaching profession. The authors of the book Teachers Have it Easy, cited a study done by the National Education Association, which reported that teachers work an average of fifty hours per week, and many work much longer hours. About a third of teachers quit after the first three years and nearly half quit after the first five years. Teaching is so strenuous, that one must possess an increasing amount of stamina, or grit, in order to stick with it despite adversity, failures, and distractions.
As a classroom teacher, every minute can be arduous and every day poses new challenges. Every single day, you’ve got to “bring it.” It doesn’t matter if your bills are past due, it doesn’t matter if you’re car broke down and you’re now catching the bus to get to work, it doesn’t matter if you are entangled in the paradoxical reality of worrying about how you’re going to pay for your own son or daughter’s college education while you work to get other people’s children into college, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got papers to grade, lessons to create, and a second job to go to…When you are in that classroom, you’ve got to stand and deliver. You’ve got to be on! You’ve got to have grit, resilience, persistence, and a fire that never goes out! You’ve got bring it!
As a teacher, your potential is limitless. You have the ability to help every student advance. The great truth is that what you have done up to this point has only scratched the surface of what is possible for you to achieve with your students. Indeed, some experienced teachers say that individuals should not endeavor to teach unless they have felt a personal calling to do so. In other words, teaching requires so much wisdom, so much dedication, and so much resilience, that you should feel as if God Himself called you to do this job. Dr. Dennis Kimbro once wrote that when the Creator wants to truly educate someone, He does not send his pupil to the school of social graces, but rather to the school of hard knocks.
As a teacher, your ability to “bring it,” your effectiveness, is the direct result of your grittiness, or your persistent effort, over a long period of time, to ensure that you and your students experience success.